Art Presenting Communism Truthfully

I came across one episode of a popular series, Northern Exposure, that ran in the 1990-1995. Highly popular then, it received many accolades, and the main actors were nominated for and received several awards for their excellent performance.

The streaming episode in question, number 25, entitled Zarya, aired during season five. For me, it was shocking because the entire show advocated for capitalism and against communism. There was even a brief plug for the crowd pushing global warming caused by CO2.

I was accustomed to Hollywood supporting all socialist and communist causes, praising the tyranny that had killed one hundred million innocent people around the world, including my own dad.

I knew that public school students and college students only received a cursory introduction to the evils, misery, famine, torture, and death that all communist societies inflicted on their citizens with the Communist Party at the helm.

The communist ideology, adopted by socialist republics in lock step with the Soviet Union, originally stemmed from Karl Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. All these countries were socialist republics run by the Communist Party under the guidance and advice of the Soviet Politburo apparatchiks.

The episode presented an imaginary and secret visit by a Soviet delegation led by Lenin to Alaska post the tumultuous times when the Soviets deposed the Romanovs in Russia.

As truth has become a victim of the lies spewed by politicians, the mass media, academia, and the government, it is important to describe what some of the characters said during this highly interesting episode of Northern Exposure.

One of the Russian characters, Mikhail Borisovich, a medical doctor who accompanies the group, refuses to go back to Russia with Lenin, not because he had lost faith in the Bolshevik Revolution, but because, as a scientist, he was no longer sure that “life can be reduced to class struggle, to dialectical materialism, or any set of formulas. Life is spontaneous and it is unpredictable,” he said to the fictional Lenin.

The show ended with the fictional narrative that, “after his return from Alaska, Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy which allowed for limited private enterprise. The policy revived the Soviet economy but was scorned by hardline party members. After Lenin’s death, Stalin abolished Lenin’s reforms and returned the Soviet Union to ‘Pure Socialism.’”

The loose connection to the show’s location, the fictional Cicely, Alaska, was brought about by the fact that Tsar Alexander II had ceded Alaska, his country’s last remaining foothold in North America, to the United States for $7.2 million.

The real Lenin did propose a New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 where a mixed economy with a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control while operating on a “profit basis.” The economy was mixed when the Soviets revoked partially the complete nationalization of industry and allowed a mixed economy to exist for a short while.

The show’s storyline reveals what Lenin’s communist-controlled society wrought: confiscation of private property, total control by the state, politically and economically, hunger, starvation, and the lack of basic goods and freedoms.

A very hungry Comrade Borisovich is plied with the abundance of decent food in capitalism, and he eats the offerings on the capitalist table like the starved and hungry socialist that he was – a doctor working for Soviet Polyclinic number 6. His female interlocutor reminds him that on Nevsky Prospekt, he could not buy a new pair of socks nor needle and thread to darn the ones he has.

The fictional Lenin visits the local shop to buy bunion shields. He explains to the elderly shop owner that, “unfortunately, for all the triumphs of our Revolution, the quality of shoes has declined.” The well-informed shop owner tells Lenin that she has read about his Soviet Union. “If you remove the profit incentive, you get shoddy merchandise.”

Lenin counters that “the middlemen, brokers, like the owner of this shop, are economic parasites.” She tells him proudly that she is the owner of the shop. “You mean your husband,” he replies. “I mean me. Why would you presume otherwise?” Lenin replies, “given the subservient position of women in capitalist society.”

“You utopian social engineers are all alike,” she replied to Lenin. “If Karl Marx had made some capital instead of writing about capital, things would have been much better.” Lenin was shocked that such a “well-adjusted woman could live in a bourgeois society.”  He was accustomed to Soviet political commissars controlling everything and everybody.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it does not deny the existence of the soul, of God, of the inventive minds of people who are unique individuals with God-given rights to explore all possibilities and opportunities to become the best that they can be, not hobbled by the communist police state.

It is surprising that Hollywood produced this episode in 1993, so soon after the “fall” of the Soviet Union in 1990. It would be ideal if public schools in the 21^st century America would teach students in detail how socialism and communism had enslaved and terrorized millions around the globe. This education would dispel any positive opinions young people have about communism.

Embrace the Challenges of Life

No matter how bad the economic and political times are, view the world as an explorer. You are standing each day before a vast universe, and you never know what it will bring for YOU.

Look at all obstacles, frustrations, challenges, pain, loss, and separations as life, your life. You will never get to redo this day, enjoy it to its fullest.

Don't be controlled by fear because you've had bad experiences. You have to learn from adversity and steel yourself. Success never comes from avoiding negative experiences, repressing that part of your life.

Embrace setbacks as learning experiences and move in the opposite direction. You are getting stronger when you embrace life with both ups and downs instead of feeling sorry for yourself when the downs may seem overwhelming.

Your life will not always be just sour grapes if you practice weeding your vineyard and don't allow molds and disease to set in.

 

A Hard-Cheated Pyrrhic Victory and a Mute Wedding

As I watched millions of well-fed, educated Americans dancing in the streets, cheering, and gloating over their hard-cheated pyrrhic presidential win to install the much-desired socialism, touted in the press and academia, all I could think about was the 100 millions of people who had lived and died under a socialist dictatorship ruled by the Communist Party and other millions who risked their lives to flee such a socialist society. And I was numb that people can be so naïve and easily swayed by clever rhetoric, just like people were enchanted a century ago by the Bolsheviks. I never once met an American who fled to Cuba or North Korea unless they were criminals sought by the law. But I sure met a lot of defectors and refugees from tyrannical regimes who sought shelter in America.

While a student in the 1980s at a southern university, I met dozens of people from Iron Curtain countries, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, who had left everything behind in order to escape to the freedom of the west.

We formed a union of sorts, sharing food from our respective cultures, learning about our new country, loving and respecting America who took us in, and speaking against the oppressive regimes we had fled from with just the clothes on our backs in some cases.

Now it is entirely different. Americans have been convinced that socialism is great, and they must have it at all costs, including a pyrrhic election victory. What is a pyrrhic victory? It is a victory won at such a damaging toll to the victor that it looks more like a defeat because it will destroy any long-term progress.

Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek king who opposed the expansion of early Rome, often compared to Alexander the Great in his tactical war efforts. But some of his victories were won at such a great loss to his troops and kingdom that history remembers him as having won battles with such unacceptable losses that the term “pyrrhic victory” was coined in his name.

Which brings me to the presidential election – a pyrrhic victory won at all costs, losing the soul, honor, integrity, and Constitution of a nation in order to achieve the promised socialist utopia of a globalist cabal who stopped at nothing to fundamentally alter its foundations and Constitution through technology, hacking, deceit, mass media indoctrination, unethical activist judges, utterly corrupt politicians, and fraud.

While America’s young generations are dancing in the streets with joy that a man with incipient dementia and a Marxist have won the White House, I see pictures flashing through my mind of people escaping from tyrannical socialist societies through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, cutting through barbed wire, dodging bullets, flying low in makeshift aircraft, stealing a train and braking through a barrier, digging tunnels, swimming across the Danube and other treacherous rivers, floating in makeshift boats, a dingy, fighting sharks across 120 miles of ocean from Cuba, stowaways on ships, on plane cargo holds, fitted inside the seats of cars, or too close to the engine compartment, all to flee to the freedom of the west.

I see a young woman holding her breath while the airport checkpoint officer discovers that she has not signed her legal passport. Instead of being turned away, the guard demands a carton of Kent cigarettes to allow her to sign the passport in front of him. And she complies – the $20 carton of cigarettes at the time was a cheap escape from imprisonment within socialist borders.

I see another woman being stripped of her jewelry because the socialist law does not allow anybody to leave the country with any gold and silver except a tiny wedding band.

I see people’s homes, personal belongings, savings, and land being confiscated by socialists and distributed to their Communist Party activists for their personal use. I see people being hauled to jail for non-compliance, protesting their incarceration until the prison door is slammed shut.

I see people standing in line to find food, toilet paper, paper towels, and sanitizing products, just like the recent lines we had to stand in at our local grocery store for months after Covid-19 lockdown. People were irritated and impatient, herded like cattle behind yellow lines, set arbitrarily six feet apart. Shelves were bare for a while but imagine doing this every day to get food?

Imagine the online ordering and curbside pickup going away if there is no adequate production planning, manufacturing, and delivery because the government is run by inefficient socialists in the same vein as Venezuela?

Starry-eyed people who get mad because their latest XBOX supply runs out before they can hit the order key on their computers, will discover a new reality, a reality of shortages of essentials.

A good friend, who read my first book, Echoes of Communism, was skeptical and could not understand how the entire population was so deprived in their daily lives by a small percentage of activists who belonged to and were loyal to the Communist Party who indoctrinated everyone initially into the “wonders” of socialism.

The day his wife called him in a panic that the shelves of their local grocery store in Virginia were bare because of the first Covid-19 lockdown, disruption of production and delivery in March 2020, subsequent hoarding of essentials, and when their refrigerator was nearly empty, he understood. They felt for a few days what we felt every day for 49 years of oppressive socialism. Once installed, the socialist republic rule of the Communist Party did not go away, the suffocating control grew like kudzu, one foot per day.

The Silent Wedding, a movie made in 2008, artistically wove the alleged “real” story of a couple’s wedding from an isolated village in Romania. The ceremony and the reception that followed, held in March 5, 1953 (a Thursday), was allegedly interrupted by a communist activist from the city and a Soviet officer who brought the news that the USSR tyrant Joseph V. Stalin had died and thus seven days of international mourning were decreed in which public celebrations of any kind were prohibited. The celebrants held a mute wedding.

Likely a fictional event, this artistic story brings to mind the fact that Americans are not allowed to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in their homes with more than six people as guests, a breaking of familial tradition disrupted and imposed by state governments around the country.  Neighbors are encouraged to snitch, [and they did already in New York] if such draconian executive orders are violated.

Ten months since the first Covid-19 lockdown, healthy people are still forced to wear masks for the good of the collective, not for their own protection, since masks are not really effective as it is stated on the manufacturer’s packaging.

This is America, of course, shortages of food and necessities cannot happen here, we have an abundant economy, optimists and the naïve repeat ad nauseum. What will happen to this horn of abundance when the socialists just elected will enforce their New Green Deal, and solar energy and wind power will not even begin to supply our country’s huge energy needs? How will cars run? How will truckers deliver food? How will products be manufactured and hauled? Joe Biden’s fairy dust?

When Joe Biden’s rhetorical pixie dust, which blinded many to choose socialism, will lift, they will be left with very little to go on and will be begging the omnipotent government to feed them and house them. Computers, technology, social media, politicians, and the mass media produce nothing of consequence that sustains life, they manufacture hot air, advertising, socialist indoctrination, and are quite good at spending trillions of other people’s money.

 

 

 

LIFE

We run through life… we don’t know in which direction…

We work hard to buy a home, a car, we struggle, we stress out,

And we get sick in the process…

Finally we earn them with great sacrifice, with hard work…

And we tell ourselves that it is time to live…

But, as soon as we sit down comfortably to live and enjoy them,

Our time has passed, and it is time to leave.

Our Beloved Bogart Crossed the Rainbow Bridge

Bogart in 2014

After a fitful night of sleep and crying, I woke up this morning imagining that I heard Bogart’s meow from his room. The house seems oppressively quiet and empty without him. The large candle I lit yesterday is still flickering on the mantle.

I opened the windows – the sun is up and the sounds of the forest are alive with the happy chirping of birds. The resident squirrels are busily collecting acorns from the large oak tree in front of the deck. They are not alarmed, the cat is away forever. It’s been a long time since Bogart had been able to chase squirrels, snapping turtles, or raccoons. Always fearless, he encountered a few foxes and a coyote in the woods, but came away unscathed.

Bogart’s stoop is still on the deck and so is his favorite stainless steel water bowl. He enjoyed making huge splashes before he dug his paws in and licked them of water. Only then did he actually start drinking with gusto.

On a very snowy day a few years ago, Bogart was trying to dig out his water pan from underneath the frozen whiteness. It is not really a bowl; it’s an expensive cooking pan with a handle which my mom designated as a deck water bowl. Bogart seemed to like it; when I tried to replace it with a real bowl, he refused to drink out of it and the pan came back out.

We are not entirely sure how much he was able to see or hear in his last months of life. But he liked sitting on his hind legs like a majestic statue, enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine. In the last few weeks, he had difficulty assuming his favorite position as his motor skills had devolved due to arthritic pain and toxins in his body.

He no longer panicked when a draft of wind shut the deck door – he probably could no longer hear well. He always hated being closed into a room without the possibility of escape. He destroyed a carpet or two by scratching and digging his way through to the floor around the door, in a vain attempt to escape.

Months ago he also stopped being afraid of the vacuum cleaner and followed Dolores around when she dusted. He had come a long way from the shy and skittish rescue cat who hid under our daughter’s bed for the first three years after he was adopted, coming out only at night to play, eat Cheetos, and drink from the commode.

Despite IV fluids twice a week for almost two years, his kidneys were on the cusp of failing in June and we increased his dose which kept him alive until October. In his struggle to stay alive, Bogart taught us important lessons about a life well-lived, unconditional love, and death. Despite the weekly fluid infusions, the built-up toxins in his body were affecting his motor skills and his brain. Kidney failure cost him the loss of almost 40 percent of his body weight.

 

Christmas 2016

 

I think he was hanging on to life to please us because he loved us so much and we adored him. I carried him to the vet even when Dave was sick and going through chemo and when I was trying to recuperate from knee surgery this year. He had become so skinny, it was hard to find a patch of fresh skin that had not been injected with IV fluids and he started to cry. I knew it was time for him to go. Throughout his illness, he remained the same sweet and loving fur baby. He had lived a long and pampered life for almost twenty years and I have been a caring and loving mother to him.

My friend Susan Soden gave me a priceless gift, a beautiful portrait of Bogart painted by Sonora. He is so life-like, from a time when he weighed 15 pounds or more. He had shrunk to a mere 8 lbs. Sonora did such a fantastic job that his beautiful blue eyes seem to follow me from every angle of the painting.

 

Our beloved Snowshoe Siamese, who was never fond of snow, taught us in his almost two decades of life with us to be better, more loving, more caring, and more patient human beings. A precious loan from God, Bogie has enriched our lives in every way.

Finding his paw tracks in the carpet behind my chair where he last slept the day he died, his often favorite and quiet spot, brought me to tears. He liked to be near me when I wrote. If he did not fit between the keyboard and my body, he was not shy about putting his paws on the keys, purring softly.

 

 

Ten years ago the vet was surprised when Bogart jumped from the examining table and got stuck behind a large cabinet and the corner wall. He had to call the maintenance guy to actually move the entire cabinet before they could extricate a much heavier Bogart out of a tight squeeze.

On the short ride to the vet, Bogart sat in my lap and was agitated, trying to look out the window to the right. He did not understand what was happening, but he knew something was not right and was making guttural and frightened sounds.

 

 

Even though we know euthanizing him was the right and humane thing to do, putting him out of pain and suffering, the grief is overwhelming, and I cannot stop crying. He was my fur baby and part of my heart crossed the Rainbow Bridge with him while part of his is in my heart.

After the first shot the vet administered, Bogart threw up, I cleaned him up, and, while the anesthesia took over, his eyes remained open and he was breathing. I showered him with more kisses and the doctor gave him the second fatal shot. His heart stopped at 6 p.m. on October 3, 2018, while I was cradling his bony and furry body.

Memory Eternal to our sweet Bogart! He was beautiful even in death.

On his stoop the day before he died

 

 

Contemplating Mortality

Handsome Bogart, 18-years old
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2017

I used to think that it was rather morbid that my in-laws had purchased their burial plots when my husband was a small child. Every time we went for a visit, we stayed in a hotel across from the hilly Memorial Gardens, with a large white praying statue on top. The lush green grass and the occasional Canada geese grazing on the slopes were peaceful and comforting evidence of perennial life.

Every time Ray would drive by he would joke in his inimitable dark humor that he bought his wife an anniversary gift and she never used it. It gave me shivers, imagining my husband’s parents deceased.

As the way of all flesh goes, it seems to be closer and closer that Joan may have to use that anniversary gift from long, long time ago. Time flew by and, as it did, we thought of living, of family, of togetherness, of life’s accomplishments, not of mortality. We thought of ourselves as living forever until someone close or known to us got really sick and died. We brushed away the annoying thought of death, as if it would never happen to us eventually. Yet we all leave this earth as dust, a short lived spark in the memory of those who know us, perhaps love us, who are still alive and left behind.

I had an eerie feeling the first time I visited my Dad’s grave. It was perhaps because I was really sick when he died and I could not attend the funeral so many thousands of miles away. In a sense, I never really had closure. I stared for hours at the pictures of his funeral my uncle had sent me, but it was not the same. It was as if he was still alive in some far away corner of the world.

But I was staring then at this corner of the world and reality slapped me in the face. My Daddy was but dust and my memories of our lives together for the first twenty years of my life. With the grace of God, Dad and Mom made me, cared for me, and loved me enough to let me go to a better place so far away. How do you ever thank your parents for choosing life?

I knew Dad’s mortal remains where interred there, but his spirit was somewhere else, in Heaven, but in some ways it lived inside of me. It was so quiet around me, you could almost hear every sound nature made, buzzing of bees, the wind moving the tall grasses, and the leaves twirling on tree branches in the gentle breeze. The earth was alive but my Daddy was part of its dust. His bones were resting in a bag deep in the earth, the wooden coffin perhaps long decayed. I planted a flower on his grave wondering if sufficient rain would keep it alive after my departure. How long would it be before it withered and died, turning to dust?

My mom is losing her battle with dementia and she hardly remembers her life in the correct sequential order. We are happy when she remembers our names.

My mother-in-law is paralyzed following a botched spinal operation and will be sent soon to a hospice, closer to the ultimate chapter of her life. Her beautiful blue eyes are still the eyes of the little girl she once was, not understanding what happened, why time flew by so fast.

Bogart is our beautiful Snow Shoe Siamese whom we adore. He is turning 18-years old sometime this year, we don’t know when because my daughters adopted him from the pound. The vet told us, he was one year old then. Although his previous owner abused him in the first year of his life, we gave him a good and loving life and home.

Bogart is showing signs of old age, turning lean and meowing more than usual, probably from arthritis pain, but can still do a hippodrome routine once in a while, running up and down the stairs, thinking he is a race horse. We clip his twisted claws which sometimes get snagged or tangled on various pieces of furniture, tapestry, or leather chairs. He is an old kitty, a centenarian in human years.

As hubby and I are struggling with profound health issues, we are now fully realizing that we are no longer the immortal young who thought we could live forever. It seems like yesterday when we met, the years flew by, but we never had enough time together, we wasted part of our youth with other spouses who were not our soul mates.

My husband is an American hero who dedicated his entire adult life to his country and I hope that someday he will take his proper place at Arlington National Cemetery.

We cannot understood why we were here on earth and why God created us, for what purpose, but we now understand that we are no longer immortal and we hope that we are going eventually to a good place, part of the circle of life, leaving traces of us in our children’s DNA.

Does it matter for most people where the final resting place will be? The sun will rise again, rain and snow will soak the ground, the moon will cast ghostly shadows in my beloved woods, the fierce hawkish wind will blow, and the earth will renew itself as it had done for millennia. We become again invisible atoms in the universe.

 

Visiting a Nursing Home, a Sobering Reality

 

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Entering the nursing home, I never know what human drama peppered with dark comedy emerges. It is a life that most Americans turn their eyes and minds away from. The residents are the forgotten sick, disabled, recuperating, and old Americans about whom few dare to whisper. “This is where people go to die,” I was told by a very good friend. “I would never put my mom in such a place.” But this is where people live now and they want dignity and proper medical care delivered with humanity and patience.

It is bad enough that they cease to have an identity, they are reduced to a wing or room number. It is bad enough that they feel trapped and isolated as they no longer have the freedom to do things they’ve always enjoyed. It is bad enough that they spend most of the time alone because the families have long abandoned and forgotten them. It is bad enough that they realize their own mortality and understand that, when they leave, it will be because they’ve passed on. It is bad enough that no one takes them seriously anymore. They’ve lost their dignity as they are no longer able to feed, bathe, and wipe themselves. They depend on the kindness or meanness of someone else who is paid to care for them but often abuse or neglect them.

On the positive side, the residents get medical care, however slowly or quickly, three meals a day that they may not have gotten before; they befriend others in the same position in life, and are forced to participate in activities to stimulate their minds and social skills.

The smell of bodily fluids is overwhelming on most days, even for those used to it. Patients are showered twice a week, some screaming for help because they’ve been bathed last month and they don’t need it again. Some don’t speak English but scream and protest a shower anyway. In their third world countries, it is hard to find water and soap or indoor plumbing, so showers are rare.

There are never enough caretakers to handle the entire floor of patients and some are left to wallow in their feces and urine. It is difficult and time consuming to change diapers on someone who cannot move and many are left for 5-12 hours in beds entirely wet. Even babies scream bloody murder if they are not changed every two hours and are left with a wet diaper too long. Patients develop constant urinary tract infections from such neglect. One caretaker to five patients is not enough help. I don’t know what the margin of profit is for nursing homes but the large fees charged per patient should at least include keeping them clean and dry. It is not easy convincing a 160 pound person to cooperate – much harder than dealing with a 10 pound baby.

A few crafty patients escape through the elevators even though they are coded. One man was chased half way down the road on the side of a very busy highway. A woman was sitting on a bench outside, all dressed up, ready to go for an imaginary job interview. Another patient, who can still dial the phone, calls 911 regularly screaming for help; the police comes and stays outside for a while. It is hard to ignore calls of desperation even from a dementia patient. You never know when the call might be real.

Patients are transported to doctors and left there for hours. Nobody comes back on time to pick them up and some are forgotten. When they are discovered missing, a search ensues. A doctor’s office eventually calls a cab, the patient is delivered back to the nursing home and the nursing home refuses to pay the fare. Mary* suffered such an indignity recently when the cabby threw her wheelchair in disgust on the curb, potentially injuring the patient who was semi-mobile. She did not have the $11 to pay the fare.

There is an ombudsman listed on the wall if a patient needs help or is being abused but who is going to call them? Many patients have been abandoned there by their relatives who only show up once a year, usually around the holidays, to make sure their relatives don’t leave them out of the will.

Many patients are so alone, I’ve never seen anybody visit them in the two years I’ve gone by regularly. I advocate for better care for my mom, but most have nobody to make sure their relatives are properly treated and handled with care and respect.

But some staff members really do care, and it is heartbreaking for them to see their patients die - they are sad and shed tears. Encountering mortality and imagining the end of life for every human being is a very sobering experience. Nobody wants to ever live in such a place, they would rather die suddenly.

Jeremy* is the oldest resident, he has few family members left, his parents, who were his caretakers, have passed on long time ago. He still remembers his previous life and talks in halted speech about his mom’s pancakes.

Barbie* kept packing her bags to go home every day for a year and a half. She was sweet, wondering around other patients’ rooms, asking them if they knew when her daughter was coming to pick her up. She died one day when she stopped eating and drinking. She finally went home to heaven without her packed bags. Yesterday I saw her frilly favorite blanket and other personal possessions in a clear plastic bag in the hallway, waiting to be donated.

A Russian man talks constantly about his homeland, his garden, and his wife, especially how beautiful his town was. Nobody knows what he is saying except me. I hear his voice and my eyes tear up wondering how this man wound up in this particular nursing home, so far away from Russia.

The staff is far away from home too, they are mostly African and Asian transplants. Some speak English well, some don’t. Some are dedicated to their jobs, others could not care less. Those are the ones to watch because they are abusive physically, verbally, and neglectful.

They have coloring activities for people with severe dementia; those patients are kept behind locked doors in a wing sadly named Arcadia. The rest get to play bingo, have coffee socials, outings to Walmart, or a Christmas party and a collective monthly birthday party. Musicians are brought in once in a while to entertain those who still have their faculties but are suffering of other illnesses. A beautiful brown lab wonders the halls and enters certain rooms to let residents pet her. She is old herself, with a bad hip, slowly waddling in pain across the hard linoleum.

There is a beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby but most patients never get to see it as they are never ambulatory. Transport vans come and go, delivering the really sick patients on sudden visits to the ER. Some come back, some don’t.

When a new neighbor passes suddenly, the reality of a corpse behind a closed door across the hallway is a very sobering experience. There was once life there, screaming in pain, now it is silence. I am not sure if the soul has gone to heaven or it’s still hovering over the deceased’s bedridden body.

People screaming in pain become a daily reality. There is no medicine that could take their entire pain away. Such a cocktail of drugs would rob them entirely of their humanity and they would become comatose. Staff nurses can only do so much to alleviate their patients’ pain.

A nursing home visit should be a required part of American high school and college education. No matter how ugly, sad, or cheery, it is a reminder of where we all might wind up someday if we live long enough. It’s a vivid lesson about the frailty of human nature, a lesson that nobody should take their good health for granted, and we should behave decently and morally towards our fellow humans.

 

*Not their real names

Sanitized Death

My daughter and I go to the nursing home so often that the head nurse rolls her eyes when she sees us, we are there almost every day. My husband jokes that we must wear a visitor’s badge every time otherwise they might not let us go, thinking that we were patients.

We did not place mom in a nursing home to abandon her there; we wanted her to have round-the-clock care that our small family could not provide. We were told that Medicare only paid for three hours a week of in-home care and Medicaid paid eight hours per day. It is certainly not part of our culture to put a loved one in a nursing home. Back then we had a very large and extended family who took turns to care for someone really sick or with long-term disability. There were few nursing homes in operation and those had the reputation of killing factories.

Today Wendy’s room is empty and is being scrubbed by the staff. The heavy smell of chlorine is permeating the halls. It is not unusual – it happens periodically when Wendy is gone to dialysis. But Wendy is gone forever. Her heart stopped the day before, shortly after her elderly mom and brother left from their trice-a-week visits. Wendy suffered for eighteen years and eventually was brought to this nursing home, blind and unable to talk or move, as her mom became increasingly unable to care for her at home.

Wendy, a tiny and gaunt blue-eyed woman, is in a better place now, no longer crying in pain day and night, only stopping when exhaustion put her into a short and agonizing slumber, or when my mom went in to talk to her in a soothing motherly voice in Romanian.  There was not a spot left on her hands that mom could touch to comfort her that did not have bruises or sores from repeated needle punctures. Sometimes her veins would bleed when she returned from dialysis.

They are scrubbing Wendy’s room spotless. Death is sanitized in this culture. People are so insensitive to dying because death is whisked away. When our loved ones pass, they are whisked away to the funeral home for embalming or cremation. There is no coffin on the dining room table for the customary three-day wake while families in the village or in town come to express their condolences to all relatives present.

Even when our beloved pets die, the veterinarian euthanizes them and disposes of their bodies in an incinerator or the owner buries them in the back yard. It is all sanitized death. We mourn their passing in a very civilized way which whisks the pain and suffering of death away and scrubs all evidence.

People usually die alone in hospitals or in their sleep. Few get their last rites or someone holding a burning candle for them. We are born into this world alone, in the presence of our mothers or perhaps an attending medic if we live in a western culture, and often we die alone, or in the presence of a stranger, if we are lucky to have anyone around at all.

We see sanitized death in movies and gratuitous violence resulting in death, but it is divorced from pain, from reality, it is just celluloid gore and blood.

There are residents in the nursing home who no longer have any relatives to speak for them. As the staff turnover is so constant, I often wonder how well these people are treated. I met a patient rights representative a year ago in the hallway, she gave me a brochure, but I have not seen her since.

We have argued with the medical staff to provide a slightly wider bed for mom because she keeps falling out of her narrow bed when she turns. Bed rails are considered cruel and a form of restraint. But they do not hesitate to strap heavy electronic bracelets on a thin and emaciated wrist to make sure the patient does not wonder off the property.

We were informed that Medicare dictates that a patient must be considerably overweight before a slightly wider bed is allowed. We live in a culture in which we are told, we are too fat for airplane seats and for our own health, but in a nursing home, being fat provides a more comfortable bed.

Every time we visit, we take time to talk to the patients who are able to come out of their rooms, patients we know, who do not have relatives coming to see them, they live too far away or are gone.

We wished the staff would allow us to bring Gary, the longest resident there, pancakes like his mother used to cook for him when she was alive. He still remembers her even though he has difficulty expressing himself. Gary told my daughter how delicious they were and his eyes sparkled with a momentary twinkle of joy. Then his head slumped down in a resigned frown.

Death is sanitized and whisked away from the corridors of pain and suffering.

On Happiness

I took up photography because I wanted to capture those moments of beauty, of tranquility, of temporary happiness. It was perhaps because I was unhappy in my own life or at least I thought I was unhappy. Most people do not really understand happiness and expect to be in a state of non-stop glee. Nobody wants to suffer disappointment, rejection, pain, loneliness, and loss. Humans don’t understand that we experience moments of transitory happiness with so many other emotions that fit into the puzzle of life.

We are so bombarded non-stop by the media’s false sense of happiness, by beautiful people, with beautiful bodies, and perfect lives and families that we begin to expect such a fantasy, such an idealized life where disappointment, failure, pain, misery, disease, and loss never exist.

We are certainly happy to be alive but in the tumult of daily life we forget this essential joy. We are happy to have a family, no matter how many or how few members are left. We rejoice in a few good friends and stories from the past that people known to us still remember. We have our daily struggles and pain but, in dealing with them, we are reminded of how lucky we are to be able to resolve them. And if we can’t, we have to move on. Life has a purpose that we don’t understand but we keep chasing it in hopes to at least catch its train. Pain hurts, tears are normal part of pain, and pain, physical or emotional, changes us, it makes us stronger.

Happiness is transitory but so are pain and unhappiness. I take my worries, tears, and deep sorrow to the woods. The solitude and the natural beauty are cathartic. Squirrels, a butterfly, the occasional deer, a fox, an interesting tree with foliage I do not recognize, a spider web, a brightly colored mushroom, and an occasional snake slithering across my path help me forget my problems. The momentary joy floods my mind and there is no room for negative thoughts but for sun rays shining through the dense canopy, drawing strange shadows on the forest floor. Even a deep and pristine snow washes my soul with its white blanket that silences the woods. It seems to silence my negative thoughts.

Worrying or complaining about life’s difficulties would not bring about resolution. Unhappiness and regret about the past would certainly not alter the present reality.  It is hard to focus on parts of our lives that are going well because we are too busy worrying or crying about the past. The scars on my soul remind me that I survived the pain and misery in the past and I grew into a stronger, more experienced person.

When people treated me poorly or told me no, I had to shrug my shoulders and I tried harder to succeed, always remembering not to make the same mistakes with other people. Happiness is not just smiling at success; happiness can be a step forward without pain.

Happiness is Bogart purring in my lap, mom’s smile, the hearty giggles of my grandchild, and the sparkle of curiosity in the innocent eye of a child. Happiness is sometimes living surrounded by those we love. There is no magical formula, only moments of joy.

Happiness is taking a chance, loving your life in the moment and enjoying simple pleasures, a sight, a smell, a taste, a hug, the wind in your hair, a warm sweater in the icy cold of winter, or reading a fairy tale to your child by the fireplace.

Happiness and unhappiness are sisters in life, who may or may not like each other, but are connected by a strong bond. You cannot possibly be happy all the time but there is satisfaction in a life well lived, laughing when you can, smile, frown, and cry when fate throws lemons in your lap.

Enjoy it now, happiness and life are temporary.

A Sliver of Soap

I took the thin layer of leftover soap and tried to stick it to a new bar I had unwrapped. I never stopped to think why I’ve always done this. I don’t throw away a bottle of liquid soap or a dispenser of lotion either – I cut it open and use up the last ounce.

I am not a miser or Scrooge on purpose - I think it goes back to the years of living under the communist regime when we were deprived of all basic necessities, things that Americans always expect to be plentiful and available. I never forgot the powerful lesson of need and deprivation.

The domestically produced “Cheia” soap was made of animal fat with a particularly unpleasant odor. We used it to bathe, to do laundry by hand, and to wash our hair. Few could afford the nicely fragranced “Lux” soap bar available on the black market or in foreign currency stores set up for visitors.

In a country where the medical system was socialized and “free,” in order to do their job right and supplement their meager salaries, doctors accepted bribes in soap, shampoo, deodorant, cosmetics, perfume, and other expensive and hard to find items.

Hotel maids brought home leftover soap, shampoo, or deodorant bottles that foreign guests discarded from toiletry bags when checking out.

The garments washed in “Cheia” soap and air-dried on clothes lines smelled like wet dogs. If that was not bad enough, by the time they dried, they turned grey from dust and other pollutants. In winter time clothes were stiff on the line.

Lacking bleach, we used to boil white garments on the stove in a huge cooking pot with melted soap in it, stirring occasionally with a stick to prevent clothes from burning. When garments faded, mom added a blue powder to the washing pot to revive dark colors.

We saw the communist apparatchiks take their laundry to the cleaners. We envied the luxury and secretly wished we could do it too.

We scrubbed dishes with a harsh white powder. We boiled water on the stove to launder bedding items. Sheets were scrubbed by hand in the tub until my young hands were raw – no latex gloves.

The iron was literally a piece of cast iron heated repeatedly on the stove - Grandma’s version had hot coals inside. I had to be extra careful not to burn the sheets or Dad’s shirts – they were too expensive to replace.

Because shampoo was very pricey and hard to find (it came packaged in small plastic squares for individual use), we washed our hair with “Cheia” in the sink. It was difficult to rinse the soap out completely; traces of whitish powder remained in the hair shaft and on the comb. We did not know hair dryers existed until we watched “Dallas” on TV. In winter time I bent over the gas stove, drying hair over the open flame – I am still amazed that my mane did not catch on fire – I did singe the ends sometimes and my eyebrows.

Americans can find such a wide and cheap variety of products; unappreciative of the abundance, always wanting more, they are unhappy and gripe about how poor they are. We would have loved to find just one brand of fragrant bath soap, shampoo, and toothpaste. What a luxury that would have been!

We did not fathom the existence of a washing machine much less of a dryer or of a dishwasher. Women today still hang laundry outside, nobody owns a drier. If they did, they could not afford the electricity, the rates are sky-high, and the power is insufficient to run appliances simultaneously. Many people own a front-loading washing machine but the clothes come out extremely wrinkled and have to be ironed. The fabric is rough to the touch, not soft. A fragranced liquid detergent replaced the unpleasant communist era “Cheia” soap.

Deodorant was also scarce and quite expensive. There was a very good reason why people smelled – hygiene and grooming were costly and a luxury. Many did not have running water in their homes or a bathtub; Turkish baths were available in bigger towns. Cosmetics and grooming products were astronomically priced for the proletariat - we were all equally poor and smelly.

Shaving was a luxury and few women owned razors – au naturel was the norm and nobody complained. Men looked disheveled because it was painful to shave with dull razor blades every day.

The ultimate in luxury and financial well-being was to afford a kinky perm in a beauty shop. Hair was burned in tight curls for months before it grew back healthy again. Women’s heads looked like sheep.

We are so spoiled in this country; people spend astronomical amounts for hair products, soap, cosmetics, deodorant, hair driers, laundry products, and machines that make life so much easier. Laundry services are affordable enough that many Americans can take their clothes to be professionally dry cleaned. The deprived society I grew up in would have been surprised at how little appreciation Americans have for their plenty.

I finally understood what my Grandmother meant when she used to tell us, every time we turned our noses to food or something she offered, “Are you tired of Good?”